


Shots over the ocean

by Emily_on_stage



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-13 00:32:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12971787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emily_on_stage/pseuds/Emily_on_stage
Summary: While watching the two parts of this week (which utterly destroyed me emotionally like oh my god) I couldn’t help but think about Zosia all the way in America who wouldn’t know anything about this. The combination of this, my undying love for Jac/Zosia and a three hour long car ride in the snow led to this which I may/may not carry on depending on the response x





	1. Chapter 1

Yale was difficult, no two ways about it, but Zosia was loving every second of it. The girl had flourished at med school but now with this Yale placement she truly blossomed. Late nights, early mornings and good coffee (one of the best parts of the American health service) had her in the best mind space she’d been in since before Arthur died.   
She was at work when Dom rang, her phone singing in her pocket just as her lunch break began. The young doctor’s heart clenched as she saw Dom’s name on her screen; as much as Yale was incredible, Zosia missed holby more than she would ever admit.   
“Hey do-“  
“Can you FaceTime me?”  
The tenuous quality to Dom’s voice set Zosia on edge, but she kept her own voice steady  
“Yeah, course”  
The face of her best friends filled the screen and Zosia’s heart dropped. Dark circles haunted his eyes and from the way the camera was quivering it was clear his hands were shaking violently.  
“Are you alone?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Hanssen’s son shot up the hospital,”  
Zosia’s breath was gone before she could even attempt to grasp it, darting away from her and out the door of the staff room. She was faintly conscious of Dom’s voice echoing tinnily from the speaker of her iPhone but was no longer aware of anything around her. The faces of her colleagues danced around her mind, a Russian roulette of survival. Olly, Sacha, Morven, Fletch, Raf, Essie, Jac...  
Jac   
“Who’s dead?”  
Zosia’s voice was not her own, octaves lower and tightening by the second   
“Raf”  
“Shit”  
Tears burned behind Zosia’s eyes and Dom ached to hold her, even through the pixelated screen he could see her desperately trying to hold herself together. He hated seeing her like this but knew that the news would be better coming from him than on a round robin email from Hanssen or worse, when she came back, expecting to find everything just as she left it.   
“Anyone else?” She whispered, not trusting her voice at a higher volume   
“Roxanne’s husband, David Hopkins? And Hanssen’s son”  
Dom’s voice broke  
“It’s my fault,”  
Zosia forcibly ejected herself from her own grief and reached out to Dom,  
“No, he made his own decisions. This is his fault. Nobody else’s.”  
“Bu-“  
“Dominic Copeland, I am warning you, I will fly back over to England just to give you a kick up the arse; if you think Jac Naylor can be scary you’ve seen nothing yet!”  
Dominic’s breath hitched and he looked at the floor, toying his lip between his teeth. The silence swelled and Zosia began to feel uneasy, her stomach churning   
“There’s more isn’t there?”  
Dom nodded silently   
“Olly?”  
Another nod   
“Dead?”  
He shook his head, paused, then shook it again. Zosia’s patience was thinning,  
“What then?”  
“Shot in the head, I don’t know what the damage is but Morven said it was bad”  
“He’s alive though?”  
“Just about”  
There was a pregnant pause, Zosia gazed, unseeing, at a cupboard behind Dom’s head, her heart pounding as she fiercely held on to her breathing. After a few minutes of this, Zosia forced herself to speak, for fear of submerging in anxiety.  
“How’s everybody else? I mean obviously shaken but...”  
“Fletch is pretty shaken, obviously he was really close with Raf so that’s hit him pretty bad. Hanssen hasn’t been in since; compassionate leave because I mean, it was his son who did all this then the police got him. He tried to save him, determined to open him up and wanted lofty and i to help but there was no point. The moment that bullet hit him, he was gone,”  
A pause   
“ I don’t think I could have done it anyway, not after what he did,”  
“What about...”  
Dom knew that this was the question Zosia had been building up to since she found out.   
“Zosh she’s going to be ok...”  
Her stomach dropped  
“Going to be? What happened?”  
“Well, we don’t know exactly but-“  
“But what? Just tell me!”  
“She was planning on leaving Holby apparently, and she got some of the shrapnel off the bullet that killed Raf and it hit an artery,”  
Dom’s eyes had been focussed on his hands but the crash he heard from his phone startled him and he looked up to see the screen empty.  
“Zosh?”  
He was answered by the sound of retching as Zosia heaved over the sink. Tears pouring down her face as she shivered, wiping vomit from the corner of her mouth, she clutched at the countertop.  
“Zosh?”  
Dom’s voice again from the phone. Moving slowly so as not to induce the nausea which has only just begun to cease, Zosia returned to her seat, attempting an apologetic smile.  
“Sorry about that,”  
“Don’t apologise to me, tell the cleaner”  
A mirthless laugh, but a laugh all the same, then silence.

“I’m coming home,”  
“Zosh you can’t give up on Yale because of this, we’ll get through it. We’ve survived the merger, we survived Arthur, we survived Jasmine, we’ll survive this,”  
Zosia shook her head, getting to her feet, taking her phone and heading out into the ward  
“I haven’t taken any holiday or sick days since I’ve been here, they can’t say no. And if they do, they can stuff their placement,”  
“Zos-“  
“I’m going to talk to my boss. I’ll call you back”  
Before Dom even had time to muster the breath to argue, Zosia had hung up and knocked firmly on her boss’ door.


	2. Chapter 2

Janice King had been desperate to meet Zosia March from the moment Guy Self had informed her that he had a daughter. So imagine her surprise when she offered a post to Jac Naylor only for her to turn it down and recommend Zosia. 

The girl had exceeded all possible expectations; the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night, never allowing cases to become too personal without assuming the robotic state that her mentor was so renowned for. Said mentor had, however, seemed distinctly less robotic when she rang Janice on Zosia’s first night with a tight throat and choked voice forcing the American woman to swear that she would take care of Zosia, make sure she was taking her medication, keep an eye out for hyperfocus, make her take a break if she needed it. The list didn’t end until Janice asked if Jac wanted her to kiss her girlfriend for her as well, to which the famously quick witted surgeon sputtered like a hot pan something about how Zosia was not her girlfriend before hanging up in an attempt to preserve her dignity.  
As much as Janice enjoyed teasing Jac, she did comply to the red head’s requests, always on the look out for the telltale signs that something was not quite right. Luckily, Zosia had gone from strength to strength since she’d got off the plane and walked into Yale. So when the knock on the door broke the serenity of her lunch hour, the last person Janice expected to see was a tear stained Zosia, dressed in her own clothes and clutching her bag with quivering hands.  
Janice leapt to her feet and ushered Zosia through the door,  
“Doctor March?”  
The young doctor opened her mouth to speak before closing it again, mashing her lips together while tears brimmed in her eyes.  
“Sit down Zosia,”  
The older woman gestured to the seat on the opposite side of the desk but Zosia shook her head, swallowing fiercely in an attempt to get rid of the lump in her throat.  
“I have to go,”  
Janice frowned slightly   
“What do you mean? Where do you have to go?”  
“Back to holby... I have to...”  
Zosia’s face contorted as she fought back another wave of tears. She jumped as she felt a hand on her shoulder,  
“Zosia, if you’re struggling you only have to say. Ms Naylor instructed me that I was to take care-“  
“I need to take care of her!”  
“I don’t follow...”  
Zosia fumbled into her pocket for her phone, knowing that she would not get three words into explaining this without dissolving into a puddle of tears. A quick google search told her more than she wished to know about the shooting, so she quickly passed her iPhone into Janice’s empty hands. 

As she skimmed the article, Janice’s eyes darkened, the silence between them made Zosia feel she could hear every beat of her heart ricocheting off her chest. When at last the woman spoke, it was with a voice not unlike the one with which Zosia spoke upon discovering the news.  
“You want to go back to Holby City in order to care for Ms Naylor is that correct?”  
Zosia nodded, too exhausted to keep up any kind of pretence  
“What about Doctor Valentine? You two were engaged were you not?”  
The younger doctor paused for a moment, gripping the leather chair,  
“Olly has people to look after him... that is, everybody likes Olly. No, that sounds awful,”  
Zosia paused, searching fruitlessly for the right words,  
“Jac doesn’t let people in, so people stay away. I guarantee you that Olly will have a constant stream of visitors; as much as she would deny it, if Jac was well she would go and visit him,”  
A sigh   
“He wouldn’t do the same for her. Nobody... maybe Sacha... but almost nobody would be there for Jac. She wouldn’t let them but I, I don’t want her to wake up on her own,”

Janice couldn’t help thinking back to Jac’s stuttering denials when she suggested a relationship between the two women. This confirmed her suspicions and frankly, she was thrilled by the idea of it. None of this showed on her face however, as she remained passive, gazing at the desk in thought.  
“Please let me take this as holiday or sick leave... I love this placement and I don’t want it to end yet but If you won’t let me go with your approval I’ll have no choice but to go regardless-“  
“It will not be coming to that Doctor March, I will book you the next flight and email you the tickets while you return home and pack. I want you on a plane on the way home before the day is out do I make myself clear?”  
Zosia nodded, a sad smile quirking her lips upwards,  
“Yes Mrs King, I really do appreciate it,”  
Janice shooed the girl out of her office with a weak smile   
“Hurry Up you! Honestly, if you brits went any slower you’d be going backwards!”


	3. Chapter 3

Jac had been awake for a couple of hours before anybody noticed. The nurses on call were all occupied and Jac didn’t have the energy or the inclination to call one; she knew they’d be incompetent and irritating. Fletch was the only nurse she could tolerate at Holby, potentially Donna at a push if she was feeling particularly lenient. However, with a clumsily stitched gash in her side and a suffocating pain in her chest, even her daughter would have struggled to coax a kind word out of Jac.  
Worse, however, than the pain, was the guilt. It permeated every single thought that entered her mind.  
She. Wasn’t. There.  
She had sent Olly to do the op on Hopkins, purely selfish motives obviously because that was what Jac did; always thinking about herself.  
Elliot had told her that enough times for it to stick and now as she lay in a hospital bed that she shouldn’t be in in the first place it was all she could hear. It shouldn’t have been Raf; he had a family and a wife who loved him. It shouldn’t have been Olly who had an incredible career ahead of him, who now may never operate again because of Jac’s selfish cowardice. The only one Fredrik got right was Jac, he just didn’t have good enough aim to do the job properly.  
She didn’t realise she couldn’t breathe until an apocalyptic pain swung into her chest and she tried to gasp in pain only to find that her body was rejecting the vital function of breathing. Jac didn’t know where the emergency button was but as she flailed helplessly in the bed, she just prayed that one of her limbs hit it at some point because, God, this was a pain such as she had never felt in her whole life, the rhythm of her heart pumped pain instead of blood in waves around her body and she contracted in agony, a cry leaving her lips without permission.  
Staggering footsteps told her that somebody had heard her and for the first time in her life, Jac wanted help. She needed it, she needed this pain to stop, in whatever way.  
Sacha’s docile face, knotted in concern, swum into the outskirts of Jac’s blurring vision. He took one look at her and paled,  
“Can I get some help in here?” He called over his shoulder as he hastened to Jac’s bedside. Sacha offered a clumsy hand to the woman and she clasped it gratefully, meeting his eyes as if to say “if anybody every finds out about this, you’re dead, but please stay,”.  
Over the years, Sacha had become rather skilled in translating fluent Naylor- one of the few people to master it and while Jac clutched his hand, writhing in pain, Sacha realised he was one of the only people to master dealing with Jac in general, unspoken signals aside, nine times out of ten if Jac needed somebody, Sacha would be her first port of call.  
The doctor who eventually came stumbling in was a young woman, one of the many new F1s brought in from anywhere they could be taken from to fill the gaps Fredrik put a bullet through.  
“Are you Ms Naylor’s Doctor?”  
The woman nodded, scrambling for the notes at the end of the bed. She had only just picked them up when a sudden whimper from Jac sent them clattering to the floor. Even as her body shook with pain, the fiery redhead found the energy to roll her eyes. Sacha saw this and couldn’t help but smile to himself; that was the Jac he knew and loved- she rapidly vanished though, another pulse of agony forced tears from her eyes and they rolled, pathetically down her cheeks. All the while, the F1 was still fumbling with Jac’s notes and Sacha’s patience was wearing thin,  
“For God’s sake aren’t you going to give her some pain relief?”  
“Oh... of course, I, erm, sorry, well”  
“Five... no, make it 10 of morphine ASAP ok?”  
The F1 nodded, producing a syringe before injecting it into the consultant’s arm. The effect was almost instantaneous; Jac’s shoulders sagged and her grip loosened on Sacha’s hand. Not quite enough to suggest she wanted rid of him, but enough that he knew her pain had lessened. The young doctor turned to leave, not wishing to intrude upon her two superiors, but as she did so, Sacha got to his feet and turned to her,  
“Doctor? Sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met- Mr Levy,”  
“Doctor Shah, I’m only temporary, filling in for somebody,”  
Sacha was used to locums playing down their importance, but it still bothered him.  
“You’re just as important as any permanent member of staff Doctor Shah, don’t you forget that. Now, I, I just wanted a quick word...”  
He looked over his shoulder at Jac, who already appeared to have drifted back to sleep,  
“I don’t want her to overhear but I think she’s out now; how many visitors has Ms Naylor had?”  
“You’d be the first Mr Levy,”  
Sacha frowned; he knew Jac could be difficult and was by no stretch of the imagination the most popular member of staff but it had been a week since the shooting and Sacha knew for a fact that Olly had had an almost constant flow of visitors and well wishers in and out of his room. His heart ached for Jac- not even Jonny had come to visit with Emma. Although Jac would not want her daughter to see her in a position she would certainly perceive as weak. Sacha shook his head sadly and dismissed Doctor Shah, who scurried off to continue with her rounds, before turning to the staircase to make his way back to Keller.  
He paused at the window and looked at the security system outside, his careworn face illuminated by the beginnings of sunrise. It was in this dim light that Sacha saw a figure hurtle out of a taxi, sprinting towards the front door, only to be sent to the back of the queue. He frowned slightly, the brown hair that cascaded behind the woman stirred memories,  
“Zosia?” He leaned closer to the window to try and make out her face. No, it wasn’t Zosia, her nose definitely wasn’t that big. And besides, what would she be doing at Holby?


	4. Chapter 4

The plane journey was uneventful. Janice’s emergency plane ticket also came with the preferential treatment that was synonymous with her name and status, but Zosia used this as an excuse to remain silent wherever possible. Typing rapidly on her laptop made her appear to be working while in reality she was on Facebook messenger to Dom.   
Zosia had always had an overactive imagination, even as a child, and it had been both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, as a child Zosia had the capability to distract herself with stories of dragons and heroic battles. But on the other, as she sat on the plane, her mind raced with images of the shooting she knew next to nothing about; Olly’s head splattering as a bullet pierces his skull. Raf’s lifeless body slumped in a corner as blood pools beneath him. And Jac.   
Jac writhing in pain but desperately stifling any sound because she’s just that stubborn. Jac’s naturally pale complexion draining to a colour akin to spoiled milk. Jac alone in a hospital bed, terrified, but too proud to say so.  
Zosia was jolted back to reality as the plane juddered to a halt outside Heathrow. The moments before the seatbelt signs switched off seemed to drag by but within half an hour of landing, Zosia was securely in a cab with a fervent promise to the driver that she would double the cab fare if he broke the speed limit for the whole journey.   
40 minutes and £127.50 later, Zosia hurtled out of the cab and ran to the hospital. She was stopped in her tracks by the burly men in uniform guarding the door; sorting through bags, scanning for metal. The whole scene made Zosia’s stomach churn but she steeled herself and offered her bag to the nearest security guard.

Meanwhile, up in Darwin, Jac hadn’t had the best of days. The pitying looks she constantly received from any member of staff brave enough to attempt to help her was enough to make her blood boil but the worst part was that she actually needed their help. The weight on her chest that had previously been uncomfortable was slowly becoming suffocating. Every breath was laboured and sent ripples of pain through every vein in her body. Eventually she called Fletch. He was off duty but for some, bizarre reason completely unfathomable to Jac, readily drove in to do her meds. To pour water for her. To remind anybody put in charge of her that she was absolutely more skilled than they were ever likely to be. (Jac had genuinely applauded Fletch after that particular moment of genius, stating that he had “miraculously located a backbone”)  
But he had children to get home to, and they needed him more than ever now Raf was gone, so even when he offered to stay the night, Jac insisted he go home at 7:30pm, in time for dinner and a bedtime story, followed by a well deserved sleep.

It was 7:35 when Jac began to cough. A deep rooted, chesty cough that shook her whole spindly frame. A cough that seemed to emanate from her very lungs and which was intent on tearing her trachea to shreds. She couldn’t stop it. The strength of it forced her to move backward and forward as she heaved and gasped for breath. Adamant that she was certainly not going to give Frieda another opportunity to Lord it over her, Jac gripped the sheets desperately, gritting her teeth and swallowing tightly.  
She only lasted a few seconds in silence before yet another cough tore through her throat, bringing tears to her eyes despite her efforts to remain stony faced.   
Yet again it was Sacha who eventually lumbered in, Jac resented the pity on his face but was powerless to deny it being deserved. She looked pitiful. Her fiery hair scraped back from her face only served to emphasise the sallowness of her cheeks and the semi-permanent red rings encircling her eyes. Jac gripped Sacha’s hand as he gently rubbed her back. Every cough wracked her entire frame and it caused Sacha physical pain to see Jac like this. He looked away from her for a moment, only to meet eyes with Zosia March. The woman smiled sadly at him before walking closer, into Jac’s eyeline.   
The redhead seemed to soften for a moment, Zosia smiled at her and reached for her hand but then Jac recoiled. Her eyes hardened and she turned away.  
“Jac I’m here,”  
Zosia’s voice quivered with fear of rejection  
“I didn’t ask you to be,”  
The reply was cold, husky.  
“Well, I am, and I’m going to look after you-“  
“Get out”  
“Jac”  
“I said get out, get away from me,”  
The monitor beside Jac’s bed began to react as her temper rose and her breathing began to race.  
“I don’t want you here. I never have. I never will!”  
Jac was shouting now, every word punctuated with a hacking cough as her body fought for breath,  
“You’re not allowed to see me. You can’t see me. I won’t let you. Leave. Go. Don’t come back. I don’t want you here!”


	5. Chapter 5

Zosia didn’t know where she was walking. Her vision was blurred but she walked with no sense of direction, hands quivering. She walked up a flight of stairs and pushed her way through a door. She walked into somebody. Somebody opened their arms and held her. Zosia cried.  
Dom cradled her in his arms as she sobbed, gently moving her away from gawping onlookers on Keller, into the on-call room where he sat behind her and pulled her into an embrace. He could feel her sobs rippling through and looked up desperately trying to restrain his own.   
They sat like this for a while. Dom toyed Zosia’s hair between his fingers, gently combing her tangled mane as they sat in silence. Eventually Zosia sobs began to cease; the occasional spluttering hiccough and her tear stained face serving as the only remnants.   
“What happened?”  
Dom’s voice sounded like home and Zosia nearly cried all over again.  
“I went to see Jac...”  
She paused, gathering her breath,  
“She told me she didn’t want me here. That she never had, and she never will,”  
Zosia looked up from her lap and met Dom’s eyes pleadingly  
“What did I do wrong?”  
Tears threatened to spill once again and Zosia ducked her head to try and halt the onset but Dom scooped her once again into his chest and rocked her gently. There was nothing to be said. The two simply sat and held each other, wordlessly trying to convey a million feelings but knowing that they would never make sense.  
A knock at the door broke the moment; Essie’s drawn face appeared. The smile upon it looked so horribly out of place and Essie knew nobody was fooled; it was easier to pretend,  
“Dom you’re needed in theatre,”  
The two young doctors smiled sadly at each other. Dom squeezed Zosia’s hand as he got to his feet and dodged round Essie to get out of the room. Once he had gone Essie looked Zosia up and down analytically.   
For a hospital, things had never seemed so quiet and when Essie spoke it was with a whisper,  
“Things have changed around here”  
Zosia laughed mirthlessly,  
“Everybody keeps telling me it’ll get easier but, I think you just get better and pretending...”  
The blonde tailed off as she felt a hand on her shoulder. Neither woman could help but smile slightly as Sacha attempted a tired grin,  
“I just want a word with Zosia, can you keep an eye on the ward?”  
Essie nodded, offering another blank smile to Zosia before she turned and left.   
Zosia couldn’t look at Sacha, she knew she’d see pity in his eyes and that was the last thing she wanted. She didn’t deserve to be pitied.  
“If you’re going to tell me that Jac didn’t mean it then don’t bother,” her own harshness surprised her but she kept her eyes focused on her shoes,  
“Jac Naylor never says anything if she doesn’t mean it,”  
“Before you left for Yale Jac told me she loved you,”  
Zosia’s breath caught in her throat; whatever she had expected from Sacha, this definitely was not it. The older man continued calmly,  
“We went to Albie’s after you accepted the position and she told me that she’d never felt so confused. She was thrilled for you; kept telling me how you’d thrive at Yale. But she never said your Christian name- it was alway Doctor March or just March or considering she’s Guy Self’s daughter,”  
Zosia couldn’t help but laugh; she hadn’t laughed properly since Dom had called her in America.  
“I knew something wasn’t quite right so I asked; she went white as a sheet and said “i love her, Sacha. I love her and I don’t know what to do,” I don’t know what you did to her but I’d never see her look so terrified. I tried to get to her but she closed up. Downed her drink and left,”  
Their eyes met. The corners of sacha’s mouth twitched slightly and he sat beside Zosia. The quiet that followed was expectant, but not uncomfortable. Zosia knew she owed Sacha an explanation but she didn’t know where to begin,  
“The first time I told Jac I loved her was when Tristan was here. Jac was trying to save her theatre, i hadn’t taken my meds it was a mess; I was a mess. Jac was kind. She took me to her house and told me to sleep, said I’d feel better in the morning and I said I love you. She shook her head and told me I didn’t mean it but I did. I do,”  
Zosia turned to Sacha, looking up at him with her tear stained face and wide eyes, for all the world she looked about twelve years old.  
“I know she loved me once. Why doesn’t she now?”  
Sacha’s heart ached for the younger doctor. Jac was complex and difficult and Zosia was in way over her head but she loved Jac; that was blatant to anybody. He just needed to help Zosia understand,  
“What Jac said to you in there was pure cruelty. It was more than just petty sarcasm; she was trying to hurt you,”   
He paused, searching for the least patronising way to explain,  
“If she genuinely disliked you. Jac would have called you a cretin and told you to get the fuck away from her before you broke the mirror on the wall; Jac uses casual insults on people she dislikes. She explained it to me once, “why should I waste intelligent verbal attacks on people who aren’t worth it?” Something like that. Actual cruelty, the kind that pinpoints insecurities, marks them with an X, then shoves the knife in and twists it. That’s reserved for those she loves. She’s done it to me. She did it to Jonny, to Joseph, to Fletch. She’s so scared of loving and being loved, that she does everything she can to stop it from happening. It works most of time; you wouldn’t even know who Joseph Byrne is he’s been gone so long. And Jonny drops off and picks up Emma as quickly as he can to avoid her. I suppose the real question is; are you willing to stay? Or are you going to leave her? Because if you’re going to leave, I suggest you do it now. Don’t drag it out. She deserves more than that,”


	6. Chapter 6

Jac threw up after Zosia left. She felt the bile rising in her throat the moment she saw Sacha’s gently chiding face frowning at her but she turned her back on him. She waited until he’d gone before she scrambled for a bedpan and coughed up the meagre contents of her stomach.   
She knew she’d behaved badly, if Emma had acted like that it would’ve been put down to childish rudeness but Jac didn’t have that excuse. It boiled down to the fact that she just wasn’t a very nice person. Tears began to sting in her eyes and she scowled, it felt like she was crying all the time lately. Patrenko hardly ever caught her but Fletch had reached the stage where he looked pleasantly surprised if Jac wasn’t crying when their paths crossed.  
“Jac?”  
Fuck. Quickly swiping underneath her eyes, she attempted to maintain an impression of calm until she saw Zosia’s raised eyebrow; almost as scathing as her own and she quickly abandoned the pretense. Zosia sat on the end of Jac’s bed, the slight bounce as she did so was enough to make the older woman wince and Zosia frowned,  
“You’re in pain?”  
Jac grimaced but shook her head  
“I’m fine,”  
The eyebrow shot up once again  
“It’s been worse than this,”  
There was a pregnant pause. Jac’s mouth twitched a couple of times before she finally spoke,  
“I’m sorry about earlier. I was out of order,”  
Zosia nodded but Jac continued before she could speak,  
“I,” she stopped  
“I didn’t want you to see me. Like this. That is, I don’t want anyone to see me like this. But especially not you,”  
“Why not?”  
Jac shot her a cutting glare  
“You know why,”  
Zosia smirked playfully  
“I know, but I want to hear you say it,”  
“Fuck-“ that godforsaken cough bubbled up in Jac’s throat and once again she found herself gasping for breath. Zosia leapt to her feet, rubbing circles into the older woman’s back as she coughed and spluttered. When it had begun to calm, Jac couldn’t meet Zosia’s eyes, a faint red blush began to creep up her neck as she stared fixedly at the floor.   
“Jac you were shot for god’s sake, you don’t need to be embarrassed about that!”  
Their eyes met for a split second before Jac broke the eye contact  
“How’s Yale?” She asked the dresser beside her bed  
“I’m over here you know?”  
“I know, but if I look at you I’ll cry,”  
“That’s ok”  
“No it’s not,” her voice broke at the same time as Zosia’s heart and she pulled Jac into her chest. Feeling the sobs against her, she held her closer, tracing circles on her arm until she felt Jac’s breathing even out and she realised that she was asleep.   
Tentatively, she untangled their limbs, laying Jac down on the side she was allowed to rest on before snuggling behind her and closing her eyes.

A few minutes later, Dom came in to check if they’d killed each other. He stopped when he saw their bodies intertwined, looked around for a moment, then snapped a quick photo on his phone. Zosia would thank him for it, and besides, it was always useful to have blackmail material against Jac Naylor.


End file.
